AMERICAN AEROPLANES AND SUBMARINES BATTLE DESPERATELY AGAINST THE GERMAN
FLEET
A week later--or, to be exact, on May 4, 1921--I arrived in New York,
following instructions from my paper, and found the city in a state of
indescribable confusion and alarm.
War had been declared by Germany against the United States on the day
that the Canal was wrecked, and German transports, loaded with troops and
convoyed by a fleet of battleships, were known to be on the high seas,
headed for American shores. As the Atlantic fleet had been cut off in the
Pacific by that desperate piece of Panama strategy (the Canal would be
impassable for months), it was evident that those ships could be of no
service for at least eight weeks, the time necessary to make the trip
through the Straits of Magellan; and meanwhile the Atlantic seaboard from
Maine to Florida was practically unguarded.
No wonder the newspapers shrieked despairingly and bitterly upbraided
Congress for neglecting to provide the country with adequate naval
defences.
Theodore Roosevelt came out with a signed statement:
“Four years ago I warned this country that the United States must have
two great fleets--one for the Atlantic, one for the Pacific.”
Senator Smoot, in a sensational speech, referred to his vain efforts
to secure for the country a fleet of fifty sea-going submarines and
twenty-five coast-defence submarines. Now, he declared, the United States
would pay for its indifference to danger.
In the House of Representatives, Gardner and Hobson both declared that
our forts were antiquated, our coast-defence guns outranged, our
artillery ridiculously insufficient, and our supply of ammunition not
great enough to carry us through a single month of active warfare.
On the night of my arrival in Manhattan I walked through scenes of
delirious madness. The town seemed to reel in a sullen drunkenness.
Throngs filled the dark streets. The Gay White Way was no longer either
white or gay. The marvellous electrical display of upper Broadway had
disappeared--not even a street light was to be seen. And great hotels,
like the Plaza, the Biltmore, and the new Morgan, formerly so bright,
were scarcely discernible against the black skies. No one knew where the
German airships might be. Everybody shouted, but nobody made very much
noise. The city was hoarse. I remembered just how London acted the night
the first Zeppelin floated over the town.
At five o’clock the next morning, Mayor McAneny appointed a Committee of
Public Safety that went into permanent session in Madison Square Garden,
which was thronged day and night, while excited meetings, addressed by
men and women of all political parties, were held continuously in Union
Square, City Hall Park, Columbus Circle, at the Polo Grounds and in
various theatres and motion-picture houses.
Such a condition of excitement and terror necessarily led to disorder and
on May 11, 1921, General Leonard Wood, in command of the Eastern Army,
placed the city under martial law.
And now on every tongue were frantic questions. When would the Germans
land? To-day? To-morrow? Where would they strike first? What were we
going to do? Every one realised, when it was too late, the hopeless
inadequacy of our aeroplane scouting service. To guard our entire
Atlantic seaboard we had fifty military aeroplanes where we should have
had a thousand and we were wickedly lacking in pilots. Oh, the shame of
those days!
In this emergency Rodman Wanamaker put at the disposal of the government
his splendid air yacht the _America II_, built on the exact lines of the
_America I_, winner of across-the-Atlantic prizes in 1918, but of much
larger spread and greater engine power. The America II could carry a
useful load of five tons and in her scouting work during the next
fortnight she accommodated a dozen passengers, four officers, a crew of
six, and two newspaper men, Frederick Palmer, representing the Associated
Press, and myself for the London _Times._
What a tremendous thing it was, this scouting trip! Day after day, far
out over the ocean, searching for German battleships! Our easy jog trot
speed along the sky was sixty miles an hour and, under full engine
pressure, the _America II_ could make a hundred and twenty, which was
lucky for us as it saved us many a time when the slower German aircraft
came after us, spitting bullets from their machine guns.
On the morning of May 12, a perfect spring day, circling at a height of
half a mile, about fifty miles off the eastern end of Long Island, we had
our first view of the German fleet as it ploughed through smooth seas to
the south of Montauk Point.
We counted eight battle cruisers, twelve dreadnoughts, ten
pre-dreadnoughts, and about sixty destroyers, in addition to transports,
food-ships, hospital-ships, repair-ships, colliers, and smaller fighting
and scouting vessels, all with their full complement of men and
equipment, moving along there below us in the pleasant sunshine. Among
the troopships I made out the _Kaiserin Auguste Luise_ and the
_Deutschland,_ on both of which I had crossed the summer following the
Great Peace. I thought of the jolly old commander of the latter vessel
and of the capital times we had had together at the big round table in
the dining-saloon. It seemed impossible that this was war!
I subsequently learned that the original plan worked out by the German
general staff contemplated a landing in the sheltered harbour of Montauk
Point, but the lengthened range (21,000 yards) of mortars in the American
forts on Fisher’s Island and Plum Island, a dozen miles to the north, now
brought Montauk Point under fire, so the open shore south of East Hampton
was substituted as the point of invasion.
“There’s no trouble about landing troops from the open sea in smooth
weather like this,” said Palmer, speaking through his head-set. “We did
it at Santiago, and the Japs did it at Port Arthur.”
“And the English did it at Ostend,” I agreed. “Hello!”
As I swept the sea to the west with my binoculars I thought I caught the
dim shape of a submerged submarine moving slowly through the black
depths like a hungry shark; but it disappeared almost immediately, and I
was not sure. As a matter of fact, it was a submarine, one of six
American under-water craft that had been assigned to patrol the south
shore of Long Island.
The United States still had twenty-five submarines in Atlantic waters, in
addition to thirty that were with the absent fleet; but these twenty-five
had been divided between Boston Harbour, Narragansett Bay, Delaware
Bay, Chesapeake Bay, and other vulnerable points, so that only six were
left to defend the approaches to New York City. And, of these six, five
were twenty-four hours late, owing, I heard later, to inexcusable
delays at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, where they had been undergoing repairs.
The consequence was that only the K-2 was here to meet the German
invasion--one lone submarine against a mighty fleet.
Still, under favourable conditions, one lone submarine is a force to be
reckoned with, as England learned in 1915.
The K-2 attacked immediately, revealing her periscope for a minute as she
took her observations. Then she launched a torpedo at a big German
supply-ship not more than a thousand yards away.
“Good-bye, ship!” said Palmer, and we watched with fascinated interest
the swift white line that marked the course of the torpedo. It struck the
vessel squarely amidships, and she sank within five minutes, most of the
men aboard being rescued by boats from the fleet.
It now went ill with the K-2, however; for, having revealed her presence,
she was pursued by the whole army of swift destroyers. She dived, and
came up again two miles to the east, bent on sinking a German
dreadnought; but, unfortunately, she rose to the surface almost under the
nose of one of the destroyers, which bombarded her with its rapid-fire
guns, and then, when she sank once more, dropped on her a small mine that
exploded under water with shattering effect, finishing her.
As I think it over, I feel sure that if those other five submarines had
been ready with the K-2, we might have had another story to tell.
Possibly the slowness of the Brooklyn Navy Yard--which is notorious, I
understand--may have spoiled the one chance that America had to resist
this invasion.
The next day the five tardy submarines arrived; but conditions were
now less favourable, since the invaders had had time to prepare their
defence against this under-water peril. As we flew over East Hampton on
the following afternoon, we were surprised to see five fully inflated
air-ships of the nonrigid Parseval type floating in the blue sky, like
grim sentinels guarding the German fleet. Down through the sun-lit ocean
they could see the shadowy underwater craft lurking in the depths, and
they carried high explosives to destroy them.
“How about our aeroplanes?” grumbled Palmer.
“Look!” I answered, pointing toward the Shinnecock Hills, where some tiny
specks appeared like soaring eagles. “They’re coming!”
The American aeroplanes, at least, were on time, and as they swept nearer
we counted ten of them, and our spirits rose; for ten swift aeroplanes
armed with explosive bombs can make a lot of trouble for slower and
clumsier aircraft.
But alas for our hopes! The invaders were prepared also, and, before the
American fliers had come within striking distance, they found themselves
opposed by a score of military hydroplanes that rose presently, with a
great whirring of propellers, from the decks of the German battle-ships.
Had the Americans been able to concentrate here their entire force of
fifty aeroplanes, the result might have been different; but the fifty had
been divided along the Atlantic coast--ten aeroplanes and five submarines
being assigned to each harbour that was to be defended.
Now came the battle. And for hours, until night fell, we watched a
strange and terrible conflict between these forces of air and water. With
admirable skill and daring the American aeronauts manoeuvred for
positions above the Parsevals, whence they could drop bombs; and so swift
and successful were they that two of the enemy’s air-ships were destroyed
before the German aeroplanes really came into the action. After that it
went badly for the American fliers, which were shot down, one by one,
until only three of the ten remained. Then these three, seeing
destruction inevitable, signalled for a last united effort, and, all
together, flew at full speed straight for the great yellow gas-bag of the
biggest Parseval and for certain death. As they tore into the flimsy
air-ship there came a blinding flash, an explosion that shook the hills,
and that brave deed was done.
There remained two Parsevals to aid the enemy’s fleet in its fight
against American submarines, and I wish I might describe this fight in
more detail. We saw a German transport torpedoed by the B-1; we saw
two submarines sunk by rapid-fire guns of the destroyers; we saw a
battle-cruiser crippled by the glancing blow of a torpedo; and we saw the
K-1 blown to pieces by bombs from the air-ships. Two American submarines
were still fighting, and of these one, after narrowly missing a
dreadnought, sent a troop-ship to the bottom, and was itself rammed and
sunk by a destroyer, the sea being spread with oil. The last submarine
took to flight, it seems, because her supply of torpedoes was exhausted.
And this left the invaders free to begin their landing operations.
During four wonderful days (the Germans were favoured by light northeast
breezes) Palmer and I hovered over these East Hampton shores, watching
the enemy construct their landing platforms of brick and timbers from
dynamited houses, watching the black transports as they disgorged from
lighters upon the gleaming sand dunes their swarms of soldiers, their
thousands of horses, their artillery, their food supplies. There seemed
no limit to what these mighty vessels could carry.
We agreed that the great 50,000-ton _Imperator_ alone brought at least
fifteen thousand men with all that they needed. And I counted twenty
other huge transports; so my conservative estimate, cabled to the paper
by way of Canada,--for the direct cables were cut,--was that in this
invading expedition Germany had successfully landed on the shores of Long
Island one hundred and fifty thousand fully equipped fighting-men. It
seemed incredible that the great United States, with its vast wealth and
resources, could be thus easily invaded; and I recalled with a pang what
a miserable showing England had made in 1915 from similar unpreparedness.
[Illustration: AS THE GERMAN LANDING OPERATIONS PROCEEDED, THE NEWS OF
THE INVASION SPREAD OVER THE WHOLE REGION WITH THE SPEED OF ELECTRICITY.
THE ENEMY WAS COMING! THE ENEMY WAS HERE. WHAT WAS TO BE DONE?]
As the German landing operations proceeded, the news of the invasion
spread over the whole region with the speed of electricity, and in every
town and village on Long Island angry and excited and terrified crowds
cursed and shouted and wept in the streets.
The enemy was coming!
The enemy was here!
What was to be done?
Should they resist?
And many valorous speeches in the spirit of ‘76 were made by farmers and
clerks and wild-eyed women. What was to be done?
In the peaceful town of East Hampton some sniping was done, and afterward
bitterly repented of, the occasion being the arrival of a company of
Uhlans with gleaming helmets, who galloped down the elm-lined main street
with requisitions for food and supplies.
Suddenly a shot was fired from Bert Osborne’s livery stable, then another
from White’s drug store, then several others, and one of the Uhlans
reeled in his saddle, slightly wounded. Whereupon, to avenge this attack
and teach Long Islanders to respect their masters, the German fleet was
ordered to shell the village.
Half an hour later George Edwards, who was beating up the coast in his
trim fishing schooner, after a two weeks’ absence in Barnegat Bay (he
had heard nothing about the war with Germany), was astonished to see a
German soldier in formidable helmet silhouetted against the sky on the
eleventh tee of the Easthampton golf course, one of the three that rise
above the sand dunes along the surging ocean, wigwagging signals to the
warships off shore. And, presently, Edwards saw an ominous puff of white
smoke break out from one of the dreadnoughts and heard the boom of a
twelve-inch gun.
The first shell struck the stone tower of the Episcopal church and hurled
fragments of it against the vine-covered cottage next door, which had
been the home a hundred and twenty years before of John Howard Payne, the
original “home sweet home.”
The second shell struck John Drew’s summer home and set it on fire; the
third wrecked the Casino; the fourth destroyed Albert Herter’s studio and
slightly injured Edward T. Cockcroft and Peter Finley Dunne, who were
playing tennis on the lawn. That night scarcely a dozen buildings in this
beautiful old town remained standing. And the dead numbered more than
three hundred, half of them being women and children.